When was the last time a California public employee was fired for being a Communist?

Not in my memory.

I lived in California for 20 years and was not aware that state law actually required the firing of Communist Party members from such positions in state and local government.

In fact, I would have thought it was practically a requirement for those jobs.

Who knew?

But that legacy of the “red scare” days of the ’40s and ’50s appears to be coming to an end thanks to the legislative work of Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, whose bill, passed by the lower house, would prevent California state employees from being fired for being a member of the Communist Party, is now headed for the state Senate.

Is this progress?

Well, let me pose a hypothetical. Let’s say there was a legacy law on the books in California from the 1940s that required any public employee who was a member of the National Socialist Party to be fired. As you may know, that was the name of the official name of the Nazi Party of Germany. Maybe some upstart legislator in California said to himself, “You know, that’s a violation of the First Amendment rights of Nazis to have a law like that on the books. I’m going to get that repealed.”

Would you be in favor of that effort?

I wouldn’t.

Neither would I support repealing a law that required Communist Party members to be fired.

Why?

Because Communism perpetrated the systematic deaths of more than 100 million people in the last century. And that’s a legacy we need to remember – not forget.

Now, I understand that Assemblyman Bonta belongs to a political party whose platform and ideology is a mirror image of the Communist Party, so he obviously feels nostalgic about that legacy of massive death and destruction.

That party – the Democratic Party – now rules California with an iron fist, the way Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong ruled China.

Understand that repealing the law won’t prevent any imminent firings of public employees in California. There are no anti-Communists in positions of power in the state. On the contrary, let’s face it, the Communist Party USA is more highly regarded in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley and Sacramento than is the Republican Party.

But what’s happening with this bill is deeply symbolic.

It’s a clear statement that opposition to Communism is no longer in vogue. It’s not fashionable in California and never has been among the liberal, “progressive” elite. In fact, there is little or no difference ideologically between the California liberal, “progressive” elite and hard-core, party-line Communists, as a comparison of the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Communist Party USA clearly shows.

Yet, we know where Communism leads because of its past, just as we know where Nazi fascism leads because of its past.

And let’s take analogies a step further.

Suppose California had on its statutes a requirement to fire any public employees who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. And suppose the California Assembly voted to repeal that law.

The California Assembly just gave the Communist Party USA a kind of endorsement. Lawmakers who voted for this bill just said, in effect, it’s time to get over our irrational fear of and opposition to Communism and the totalitarianism and mass murder it always breeds.